Terry Eagleton Quotes

As reason is a rebel to faith, so passion is a rebel to reason.

We seek a logical understanding of mass violence, but war and civil strife rarely explode because of rational grievances. Complaints about oppression, poverty or injustice may serve as superficial catalysts, but few wars can be traced to objective decision-making by the dispassionate leaders of cool-headed populations. War is an act of passion, not of policy.

I’m not insane, I’m voluntarily indifferent to conventional rationality.

I do hope that young men and women will start to think for themselves and start to take responsibility for their own thoughts.

The mind scolds the heart, which makes excuses and goes its own way.

... there is no such thing as a rational world and a separate irrational world, but only one world containing both.

Control over consciousness cannot be institutionaliz ed. As soon as it becomes part of a set of social rules and norms, it ceases to be effective in the way it was originally intended to be.

Every dance I make is a dive into this well of ancient memory.

Every man builds his world in his own image; he has the power to choose, but no power to escape the necessity of choice. If he abdicates his power, he abdicates the status of man, and the grinding chaos of the irrational is what he achieves as his sphere of existence—by his own choice.

The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself.

Nobody teaches life anything.

Reason is the first victim of strong emotion.

People are just cannibals unless they leave each other alone.

Fear is the enemy of logic.

The fight we are in here, make no mistake about it, is a fight of individualism versus collectivism.

In this world, man has two significant possessions: intelligence and emotion. These two possessions govern our day-to-day life. But very often we see that emotion (ego) gets the upper hand in our life. We know that even if someone is extremely intelligent, when his emotion comes to the fore it will devour him. He is compelled to do what his emotion asks him to do.

Art does not tolerate reason.

The man who is thus outside the confines of every value-combination, and has become the exclusive representative of an individual value, is metaphysically an outcast, for his autonomy presupposes the resolution and disintegration of all system into its individual elements; such a man is liberated from values and from style, and can be influenced only by the irrational.

The heart yields spontaneity; the mind bends to understanding.

When people come together around music, there's something ancient going on. It has to come from a genuine place and that's part of the challenge. You have to cultivate that authenticity everyday.

People should always mind their own business. More trouble is caused in this world by interference than any other single thing.

Do you know that my personal crusade in life (in the philosophical sense) is not merely to fight collectivism, nor to fight altruism? These are only consequences, effects, not causes. I am out after the real cause, the real root of evil on earth the irrational.

The first and most important thing an individual can do is to become an individual again, decontrol himself, train himself as to what is going on and win back as much independent ground for himself as possible

People are not here to meet your expectations.

Each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom.